Los Angeles attorney J.
Wiseman MacDonald was no doubt beaming on Nov. 21, 1934. It was on that date
that the Third District Court of Appeals embraced his argument that when the
Los Angeles City Council enacted an ordinance, effective Oct. 12, 1929, closing
Olvera Street to vehicular traffic, it acted in excess of its police power.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Caryl Sheldon
had rejected that broad assault by MacDonald on the city’s action. Nonetheless,
in his judgment of Dec. 24, 1931, Sheldon did substantially vindicate the
peculiar interests of MacDonald’s client, Constance Simpson, who owned a
building at the southwest end of the historic lane. Olvera Street had recently
been refurbished and converted into a pedestrian tourist attraction with an
early-California theme—and had come to be often referred to as “El Paseo
[walkway] de Los Angeles.”

Simpson’s beef was that vehicles no longer had
access, for loading and unloading purposes, to the rear side of her building,
on Olvera Street, which had long functioned as an alley. Access did still exist
from the front, on Main Street.

As noted here last week, Sheldon ordered that
concessionaires’ booths on the Olvera Street side of Simpson’s structure be
removed and that the chain blocking vehicles from entering that street at the
south side be moved north a few feet, creating an area for parking.

Simpson basically got what she wanted. Nonetheless, she
appealed, and the appeal was—I haven’t come across why—shifted to Sacramento.

Justice John A. Plummer wrote the opinion. It is
grounded on this proposition, quoted from Corpus Juris Secundum:

“The primary object of municipal regulations is
public and not private. The police power may not be exercised for private
purposes, nor for the exclusive benefit of particular individuals or classes.”

Underlying the opinion was the errant notion
that selfless efforts spearheaded by Christine Sterling, and backed by civic
leaders and the Los Angeles Times, to preserve one of the city’s two earliest
streets—and along with it the oldest standing house, Avila Adobe—were intended
to serve a private cause, rather than the public interest.

The opinion asks:

“What was the object to be attained by excluding
vehicular traffic from Olvera street?”

It answers:

“We think it is absolutely undeniable that it
was simply to enable the defendants Christine Sterling and Plaza de Los Angeles
[a non-profit corporation] to beautify Olvera street and make an attractive
show place….”

That purpose, the opinion declares, “is not
police regulation.”

Aside from condemning the ordinance as special
interest legislation, the opinion more broadly questions the legitimacy of the
measure, saying:

“We have yet to learn that the passage of an
ordinance which opens the way for the establishment of a show place on a city
street is an act having for its purpose the elevation of morals or in any wise
tending to promote the general welfare.”

Seizing on that last sentence, a column by Harry Carr
appearing in the Nov. 24 edition of the Times scoffs:

“And so by the profundity of the court, we learn
that transforming a miserable wretched slum into one of the most charming spots
in the world is not promoting the general welfare.”

The column notes that before Olvera Street was
transformed into a themed walkway, it was “a dirty, vile-smelling old alley” at
“a decayed end of town.”

A Nov. 23 Times editorial remarks that the court’s
decision “has dealt a serious but not necessarily irremediable blow to the
large number of patriotic citizens who have labored so long to establish here a
feature unique to Los Angeles,” continuing:

“It will not, however, discourage them. It will
spur them to present a more complete case for saving the Mexican village when
the petition for a rehearing is brought before the State Supreme Court. In fact
the issue, if necessary, will be carried to the United States Supreme Court is
the declaration of Mrs. Christine Sterling, who has taken the leading part in
promoting this civic enterprise.

“Olvera Street has not only been a delightful
rendezvous for the artists of southern California but has been leading attraction
for tourists visiting the city. [First Lady] Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt is one
of those who have extolled its charm. More than 5000 tourists have on occasions
visited it in a single day.

“From a utilitarian standpoint, Olvera street
has a value in its present form that it win never possess as a through
thoroughfare. It will simply go back to its former state, that of an unsightly
alley. In addition it will place 250 now self-supporting Mexican families on
the county charity rolls. If the judges who rendered the decision could have
seen for themselves what Olvera street looks like today, and what it was and
will again be if the village is destroyed, they might have taken a different
view of the case.”